Ancient Merv Project

Merv

The Great Kyz Kala - one of
the impressive medieval earthen buildings of the Merv Oasis that
are currently being documented, researched and conserved.

A Short History of Merv

Merv lies on one of the main arms
of the ancient Silk Roads that connected Europe and Africa to the Far East. The
broad delta of rich alluvial land created by the Murgab river, which flows
northwards from Afghanistan, forms an oasis at the southern edge of the Karakum
Desert. The ancient cities of Merv developed at the heart of this oasis, close
to the course of the main river channel in antiquity. The succession of cities,
which together once encompassed over 1000 ha, date from the 5th century BCE to
the present day.

Annotated IKONOS image of the Merv Archaeological
Park.
On the right of the image the light green enclosure is Erk Kala, Gyuar Kala
(darker green) surrounds it. These lie adjacent to Sultan Kala (light blue),
with the diamond shaped enclosure of the citadel of Shahriyar Ark (dark blue).
Outside the contiguous zone of the park lie Abdullah Khan Kala (red) and Bairam
Ali Khan Kala (orange).

In the 5th century BCE the Achaemenian Empire, stretching from
Turkey to India and from Central Asia to Egypt, stimulated a
growth in long-distance trade. A flourishing administrative and
trading centre developed in the Murgab delta, now called Erk
Kala. We know little about this first city: its city walls encompassed
an oval area covering about 12 hectares, but as the earliest
settlement lies some 17 metres below the modern day surface,
buried under a sequence of more than 1,500 years of buildings
and daily life, it is relatively inaccessible to archaeological
exploration.

The region came into the Hellenistic world in
the late 4th century BCE, as Alexander the Great swept through
on route to the Oxus and India. The eastern territories of his
empire soon became part of the Seleucid Empire, and Antiochus I
(281-261 BCE) began a massive expansion of the city at Merv: the
earlier city of Erk Kala was converted into a citadel and a vast
new walled city was laid out, Antiochia Margiana (today called Gyaur Kala), nearly 2 kilometres across and covering some 340 hectares.
Again, we currently know little of the detail of the early Seleucid
city, buried as it is under a deep sequence of later occupation,
although recent excavations of the outstandingly well preserved defences seem to confirm the Antiochus construction date, and give
us a fascinating insight into the scale and organisation of the
early city.

Imaginative reconstruction of the city of Gyaur
Kala in the Sassanian period, by Claire Venables

The great city of Gyaur Kala was
to develop with the ebb and flow of empires and trade over the
next 1,000 years.
The Parthians (from c 250 BCE), and then the Sasanians (from 226 CE), developed Merv as a major administrative, military and trading
centre. The defences were repeatedly rebuilt and strengthened and
the vitality of the city is reflected in the numerous building
programmes and in the wealth of objects recovered from the excavations
within Gyaur Kala. But there were also periods of decline, particularly
when nomad invasions or migrations destabilised the area: during
the 5th century CE, for example, Merv was probably the base for
the disastrous campaigns against the Hephthalite Huns – during
which the cream of the Sasanian elite were killed.

With the coming of Islam, in the
7th century CE, the urban landscape and the conduct of daily
life began to change, as did Merv’s
role in the wider world. As the capital of Khurasan (the ‘eastern
land’) Merv became a centre for Arab expansion, intended
to relieve the over-crowding and religious and political discontent
of towns such as Basra and Kufa in southern Iraq. A self-contained
walled town, Shaim Kala, built outside the eastern gates of Gyaur
Kala, perhaps to house these colonists (sadly this town has been
largely destroyed under a Soviet planned village).

In the 740s the commander Abu
Muslim took control of Merv, raising the black banners to proclaim
the start of the Abbasid revolution.
Baghdad was soon established as the capital of the new empire,
but Merv’s status as the capital of Khurasan had grown and
now the empire from east of the Great Desert to the frontiers of
India was administered from here.

Abu Muslim commissioned a mosque to be built alongside
the Majan Canal, which flowed a kilometre to the west of Gyaur
Kala city wall. There had been earlier occupation in the area;
for example, by about the 7th century köshks, defended
houses were being constructed, with massive corrugated walls perhaps
the
most striking buildings surviving at Merv. By the 11th century
Abu Muslim’s mosque lay at the centre of the thriving city Marv al-Shahijan (Merv the Great: today Sultan Kala).
It is possible to see the mosque as part of the planning for the
heart of the
new city, which was clearly organised, with a planned street system
and a carefully managed water supply (with numerous canals and
reservoirs in each district). It seems likely that the new status
of Merv in the 8th century, coupled with new ideas and beliefs
that identified the need for public spaces, buildings, infrastructure – and
perhaps most importantly, access to clean water, not only for domestic
purposes but also for the practice of Islam – led to the
deliberate and planned development of a new town.

As Sultan Kala rose to prominence the old city of Gyaur Kala
began a gradual process of change and decline. Surface artefact
studies
suggest that the area of settlement contracted, and excavations
have shown that the defences of the old city had fallen out of
use by the 9th century. Along the main streets of the old city
new industrial activities developed, turning it into the industrial
suburb of the new city.

Sultan Kala continued to expand and develop through
the Seljuk period (11th to early 13th centuries). Its walls enclosed
some 340 hectares (a circuit of nearly 9 kilometres), with walled
suburbs to the north and south encompassing an additional 210 hectares:
at this time Merv was one of the largest cities in the world. Aerial
photographs reveal a landscape of dense urban occupation on either
side of the Majan Canal, with numerous streets forming a slightly
irregular grid. Numerous large rectangular structures, interspersed
within the tightly packed houses, mark the location of the some
of the more substantial buildings. Markets, mosques and madaris proliferated, while substantial caravanserais were built within
the city and along the main roads leading out, especially to the
west. There was a large industrial quarter in the western suburbs,
mainly producing pottery, including highly decorated moulded wares,
which were in great demand along the trade routes. In the 12th
century a walled citadel (Shahriyar Ark) was constructed in the
north-eastern corner of the town, enclosing a palace complex, administrative
buildings and high quality residences.

Merv had probably already started to wane by the
later 12th century, as east-west trade had begun to be dominated
by the seaborne routes between the Far East and Europe. By the
early 13th century trade became disrupted by the movement of nomadic
peoples to the east: the rising Mongol Empire.
In 1221, a Mongol army arrived at the gates of Merv. They spent
six days riding around
the defences, looking for the weak points, before the town negotiated
a surrender. Unfortunately, whatever the basis of the surrender
was to have been, it was hardly a success. According to historical
accounts the townspeople were massacred and the town burnt to the
ground and abandoned. Various estimates have been given for the
number of people put to death, ranging up to a million – however
inflated the truth became in the telling, there can be little doubt
that the scale of destruction and loss of life was horrific. Archaeological
evidence suggests that the subsequent events were complex: there
is evidence for buildings in the city of Sultan Kala continuing
in use well into the Mongol period, and substantial quantities
of Mongol period ceramics and industrial activity have been found
within the city and its suburbs, possibly industrial zones surrounding
a settlement in the citadel of the old Seljuk town. At present
we have much to learn about how quickly life began again in Merv
after the sack and the organisation of the Mongol settlement.

By the 15th century the old town was largely abandoned in favour
of a new planned town, later called Abdullah Khan Kala, which
was built some 2 kilometres to the south. This Timurid city
was carefully
laid out, covering some 46 hectares, with axial streets, a citadel
area, baths, mosques and madaris, all enclosed by a defensive
circuit. In many places this would have seemed a substantial
town, and it
was, but in the shadow of the vast Sultan Kala, it has suffered
from the comparison, both in terms of its study and preservation.

The Site Today: location and World Heritage Status

37° 42' N, 61° 54' E
Merv is situated in modern day Turkmenistan, in the Mary Velayat
in the south-east of the country.

In 1987 Turkmenistan
established an archaeological park to protect the walled cities,
some of the immediate extra-mural areas, and selected outlying
buildings. This has already done much to improve the basic condition
of the site, removing modern agriculture from within the walled
areas and generally improving access to the monuments. In 1999
the site was declared a World
Heritage Site. However, there
are daunting conservation issues and in 2000 Merv was placed on
the
World Monuments Watch’s list of the world’s 100 most
endangered sites.

Geographic Background

The majority of Turkmenistan is
comprised of the Karakum Desert. Along the country’s southern
borders, however, runs the Kopet Dag mountains, with peaks in
excess of 3,100 metres
(10,170 feet), dividing Turkmenistan from Iran and Afghanistan.
A number of small rivers and streams run down from this chain,
until they disappear into the desert creating a fertile piedmont
zone, while a number of more substantial rivers have created large
fertile deltas and oases. The changing exploitation and hydrology
of these water sources have shaped the shifting occupation of the
foothills and desert margins over the past 4,000 years.

Landstat
image of the Murgab delta, showing the dendretric nature of
the oasis.

One of the most substantial rivers
is the Murgab, which flows northward from the Kopet Dag mountains,
forming a broad delta
of irrigated
land: the Murgab Delta. The ancient cities of Merv sites lay
within this oasis: at times close to the course of the main
river, but
now some distance from the shifting main channel.